And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.

Don't forget how you got here. Don't Forget.

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.

I've done it all before, I tell myself, and I can do it again. Trust is the strongest weapon.

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.

Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.

Gabriel's voice can reach me anywhere. Even in a hurricane.